Heads up, nature artists! Agua Caliente Park Ranch House Art Gallery is accepting applications for their four-week exhibition period in 2016. The pieces have to reflect nature, wildlife, landscapes, southwestern themes, or local cultures that fit thematically with the park setting.

To apply, send your application in by March 14. Here's what it needs to include:

• Cover Sheet with your name or name of organization, contact information: phone number, email address, and mailing address.
• Six – 10 color photographs (4”x 6” or no larger than 8”x 10” prints) that are representative of the work you propose to exhibit. Email submissions should be jpg or pdf attachments. Please label images with artist name, title of work, dimensions of the piece, and art medium.
• A brief resume or biography.
• An artist’s statement and description of work.
• Stamped, self-addressed envelope if you want application materials returned.

Apply by email at [email protected], using JPEG or PDF attachments or through snail mail at:

Agua Caliente Park Ranch House Art Gallery
Pima County Natural Resources, Parks and Recreation
3500 W. River Road
Tucson, AZ 85741
Or Email to: [email protected] (use jpeg or pdf attachments)

Badass droney psych rock band Moon Duo was slotted to play Valley Bar in Phoenix on March 21, but then something amazing happened and the concert was moved to Tucson instead. You can (and most definitely should) get tickets to the show at Flycatcher via Ticketfly for the low, low price of $10.

If you're not sold, just sit back, relax, and pretend you're in a Quentin Tarantino movie while listening to their performance of "Motorcycle, I Love You" at last year's Austin Psych Fest.



On the other end of the rock and roll spectrum, music nerds will be happy to know Interpol and Ryan Adams just booked Tucson dates as well at the Rialto Theatre. The shows are on April 8 and April 21, respectively, and will likely sell out. The good news is that it looks like festival season is finally upon us and a host of amazing acts will be stopping through Tucson in the coming months. 

Emma Watson, the obvious star of the Harry Potter movie series, confirmed today that she will be playing Belle in the upcoming live action version of Beauty and the Beast. 

Says the Watson:

I'm finally able to tell you... that I will be playing Belle in Disney's new live-action Beauty and the Beast! It was such a big part of my growing up, it almost feels surreal that I'll get to dance to 'Be Our Guest' and sing 'Something There'. My six year old self is on the ceiling - heart bursting. Time to start some singing lessons. I can't wait for you to see it. Emma xx

Stephen Chbosky, who both wrote the book and directed the movie "Perks of Being a Wallflower," is in charge of the script. No word yet on a release date.

The state Legislature and Arizona school districts will be in court-mediated talks soon over the hundreds of millions of dollars the state was ordered to give schools in back payments.

The two "voluntarily agreed" to participate in the process, which will be mediated by a panel of three Arizona Court of Appeals judges, according to the Arizona Capitol Times. What happens inside those walls will be confidential.

Last summer, a Maricopa County Superior Court judge ordered Arizona to immediately hike public schools' funding by nearly $317 million a year—this would have cost the state more than $2 billion over the next five years. 

The same judge is also considering ordering Arizona to give schools $1.3 billion in back payments in funding the state did not provide since 2009.

The state is currently appealing.

Gov. Doug Ducey mentioned the issue in his budget proposal—$74 million to settle the lawsuit, which is considerably less than what the court ordered.

The state Legislature has continuously argued that it cannot afford the payments and that these would become a burden to taxpayers, but the public schools say the state should be able to figure it out. 

Arizona is among a group of states the Human Rights Campaign is watching closely for not having statutes in place that protect lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender people from discrimination in the workplace and other places. The group put us in the "lowest performing category" in its newly-established state equality index released Friday.

We are among 32 states that doesn't have "explicit state-level workplace protections for all LGBT employees," the group says. There is inequality when it comes to the adoption process, employment benefits, not to mention that recently a bill claiming to be protecting "religious  freedom," which would have allowed businesses deny service to LGBT people and others, made it to then-Gov. Jan Brewer's desk.

Brewer ended up vetoing that last year, but mostly because several businesses threatened to cut ties with Arizona. 

From a press release by the HRC:

Though same-sex marriage is legal in 36 states and Washington, D.C., more than 111 million people, or 35 percent of Americans, live in states that have marriage but where LGBT people are not fully protected from discrimination in the workplace. And more than 206 million people nationwide live in states where every LGBT person lacks fully-inclusive statewide workplace sexual orientation and gender identity protections.
In Arizona, although a bill potentially allowing for discrimination against LGBT people on the basis of religious beliefs was defeated in the last session, it is likely that anti-equality lawmakers will reintroduce the bill in 2015. Advocates in Arizona, working closely with business leaders, hope to defeat that measure and build support for statewide non-discrimination legislation.

There is some good news, though. A bill was introduced this year that seeks to fix this.

HB 2188 is a revision to the state's discrimination in the workplace statute, and adds both gender identity and expression, as well as sexual orientation to the law.

Among the bill's sponsors are state Reps. Stefanie Mach and Bruce Wheeler, and state Sen. David Bradley, all from Tucson.

We'll see if the bill makes it...

I've stayed quiet on the question of whether TUSD should have an internal auditor. I'm an experienced educator and classroom teacher, not an administrator or budget analyst. I dive into administration-level questions when I feel I have to, like now, but I don't do it with a great degree of confidence.

Some board members and others have been pushing TUSD to hire an internal auditor who would look deeply into the district's finances, its compliance issues, questions of fraud or financial mismanagement, and so on. Board member Mark Stegeman has pushed the hardest, long before H.T. Sanchez became superintendent. In fact, before Stegeman was elected to the board, he was on the district's audit committee and was pushing for greater scrutiny of district finances back then.

The topic has been discussed and debated for years. It looked like it might be resolved when Stegeman and fellow board member Cam Juarez got together and created a compromise proposal. But in the end, it was voted down at the Jan. 21 meeting, with Juarez voting against the proposal he helped create.

I think it's very possible having an internal auditor at TUSD is a good idea. If that sounds like a weak, cautious endorsement, that's because it is. I'm more certain that, unless the function is abused, it's not a bad idea. The main abuse I see would be a board member using the auditor to go on fishing expeditions and witch hunts—the TUSD equivalent of the endless congressional Benghazi hearings of the past few years ("I know we'll find something, anything, if we look long and hard enough!"). But the proposal just voted down stated that the auditor can't take direction from a single board member. It "may receive direction only from the Governing Board (in quorum) or from the Superintendent or designated staff to the extent authorized by the Board (in quorum)." That means one or two board members can't use the auditor as their private investigatory tool.

So I'm leaning toward the idea that an independent auditor might be a good idea. But I have a number of reservations I want to discuss here, many of which I haven't heard brought up in recent discussions. A warning: I'm planning to get windy and very deep in the weeds soon, so if you're not really interested in the topic, run for your life before it's too late! That being said—

Zona Politics Eps.15 from Zona Politics with Jim Nintzel on Vimeo.

On this week's Zona Politics with Jim Nintzel: Attorney Jeff Rogers and Civics Education Initiative Executive Director Sam Stone talk about the new test requiring high-school students to pass a civics test to graduate from high-school; Gov. Doug Ducey's proposed cuts to K-12 education, universities, health-care programs and more; the need to reform sentencing laws; the "Dream Pods" that homeless advocates are using in a downtown park; and more. Watch it online here or tune in Sunday morning at 9:30 a.m. on KGUN-9 to see the broadcast show.

The UA Lunar and Planetary Lab yesterday unveiled a new mural on the side of the Michael J. Drake Building, where the work of developing the the OSIRIS-REx space probe is underway. The spacecraft is designed to spend more than a year orbiting an asteroid before getting close enough to grab a sample and shoot it back to earth. (More on the amazing mission here.)

Daniel Stolte of the UA News Service explains how the mural came together:

One of my favorite spring traditions, the UA College of Science Lecture Series, gets launched again on Monday, Jan. 26, on campus at Centennial Hall, 1020 E. University Blvd.

This year's theme is life in the universe:

For its 10th anniversary, the University of Arizona College of Science's popular spring lecture series will present seven free lectures exploring various aspects of life in the universe.

The first lecture will be on Monday, Jan. 26, at 7 p.m. in Centennial Hall on the UA campus.

Life as we know it produces complex order. Earth's many life forms are diverse and continually changing through birth, growth and evolution. The series will investigate questions including: What is life? How do we recognize it?

To understand life in the universe, we ask: What environments produce life and which attributes make something alive? How does life change? Is there life in our solar system or on one of countless exoplanets? Is there a connection between life on Earth and life elsewhere — or are we alone?

This first lecture tackles the topics of "What Is Life?" with Guy J. Consolmagno, a planetary scientist with the Vatican Observatory Research Group. The details on his talk:

Tucson's Brian Lopez released a new video this month for the title track off of his 2014 release "Static Noise," and, ladies and gentlemen, it's a real thinker.

In Tucson Weekly's 2014 feature of Lopez, he said this of the song:

"That song actually is about a man's love for his broken television." Lopez explained. "A very lonely man, obviously. He's singing to his television, that just plays the static noise. That was just me on piano, a live take. I wanted to hear my fingers pressing the keys. I wanted it to be just like you are in the room with me."

According to music critic Linda Ray, "the music invokes a mid-century movie scene with a white piano, a women dancing in bias-cut satin and, in the air, the fragrance of gardenias." However, it seems Lopez and director Nadine Roselle went the complete opposite path with his aesthetic for the video, instead relying on a more macabre, bare, and solitary style, as well as some familiar imagery.


You can catch Brian Lopez live, along with Carlos Arzate & The Kind Souls, at Monterey Court on Friday, Feb. 6 at 8 p.m. You can buy tickets at the door the day of the show for $15 or online, in advance, for $10 via Brown Paper Tickets.